


Insectual Attraction

by Lemon Dr Pepper (sh1defier), lemon_dr_pepper



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Friendship, Gen, Wholesome Belial fanfiction, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 18:45:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18349535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sh1defier/pseuds/Lemon%20Dr%20Pepper, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_dr_pepper/pseuds/lemon_dr_pepper
Summary: Sariel leans in closer to inspect what he describes and Belial can’t help but grin.  “You have a lot of faith in me.  The last time Lucilius got this close to me with a cicada in my hand I put it right on his nose.  That was ages ago, and he still hasn’t forgiven me.”





	Insectual Attraction

**Author's Note:**

> Summer 2018, Pash! magazine released a 'character interview' with some of the Granblue guys, including Belial, about the ways they spend their summers. Here's the translation of one question via Granblue_Eng on Twitter:
> 
> Q: What’s the first thing you think of when you think of summer?  
> Belial: I think of cicadas. Have you ever seen a cicada emerging from its shell? It’s like an angel being born.  
> The cocoon cracks open, and glistening, translucent wings emerge from the back. It’s so beautiful. Its newly reborn body hardens once it touches the air, but until it does, it’s soft and so easy to break, like tofu or pudding. I used to love playing with them and Lucilius would get so mad at me. Wait, what were we talking about again?

“Deputy…”  Sariel looks in the direction of his companion, slightly downwards due to the fact that he’s taller than him even when he slouches.  Belial is smiling deviously beside him as they walk. He cuts his eyes up at Sariel in turn.

“Are you curious about what we’re sneaking off for?”  He waits patiently for a response. Most of the other angels seem to have written Sariel off.  As the Archangel of Execution, outwardly he seemed to lack any apparent interests or strong feelings on any subject.  That’s their fault, though, really. His muted view of the world was the product of a lack of stimulation of the mental variety.  Sarry’s a man of few words, but it didn’t take long for Belial to get him talking once he bothered to stick around and give him the time to think of what to say.  Of course he has thoughts and feelings, like any of them. There are things in this world he appreciates and things he actively dislikes. He may not say it much, but he does care about the things that happen to him.

After a moment, Sariel responds.  “Not really.”

Belial laughs.  “Not even a little?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it curious…  Is it going to be a mission?” He takes a bit to get going, but being ineloquent isn’t the same thing as being brainless.

“Sort of.”  Sariel’s brow furrows, so Belial continues.  “That’s what I’m going to call it. If anyone asks, tell them it’s a very important mission and direct them to me.  You don’t have to explain anything else.” Sariel watches him a bit longer, but ultimately nods, his long, wild hair spilling even more into his face as he does.  “If you want to know the truth, though, we’re really just going to be fooling around. Trust me, you’ll love it.”

“Okay.”

“Ooookay,” he replies in a sing-songy voice.

“... Ooookay.”

Belial’s charmed laughter rings out crisp and clear in the quiet around them.  “I’ve been wanting to show you this for a long time, but this is the first opportunity that I’ve had.  Oh, one thing, though.” He stops in his tracks; Sariel does the same. Belial is still smiling, but he speaks more seriously.  “Don’t tell Cilius, okay? He hates when I do this.”

Sariel’s bright blue eyes stay trained on him for an extended few seconds.  He brushes some of his hair out of the way and nods again, knocking it right back to where it was before.  “Ooookay.”

Belial picks up the pace a bit, his enthusiasm building as he leads the other angel through the corridors and, ultimately, out into the open night air.  It’s surprisingly warm for this time of year, decently late spring but summer still a ways away. He’s been keeping a close eye on the weather in anticipation of this little outing he’s been planning, poking around the parks and gardens near the trees and the edges of buildings in the aftermath of every rain.  Sariel’s steps become a little more brisk as he realizes that they’re heading in the direction of one of those parks now. There’s that curiosity, whether he calls it that or not. Belial takes in a breath, the smell of petrichor filling him, and lets it out in a pleasant sigh. “It’s a beautiful night for this.  Maybe it was a good thing that we had to put it off for so long. We’re primed for an especially good show.”

“You think it’s beautiful?”

“Absolutely.  It’s warm and fresh--even though it rained this morning, there’s not a cloud in that big black sky.  Just look at that moon!” It hangs above them in bright white glory, almost full but not quite. There’s a little penumbra warping the otherwise perfect circle.  It’s the definition of gorgeous, but Sariel tenses beside him anyway. When Belial looks at him next, his gaze is fixed on the ground beneath them instead of what’s above.

“I don’t know if I’d call it beautiful…”  Belial cocks his head. “I don’t like the moon.”

Ah, right--he remembers now.  One of Sarry’s last missions as Executioner saw him taking on an entourage of moondwellers nearly single-handedly.  Belial had only found out about it after the fact, while reading the medical report explaining how Sarry had come back victorious but more or less torn in half.  Not a particularly pleasant experience. Belial’s lips thin. “Whoops. Sorry, Sarry. Didn’t mean to open up that old wound.”

Sariel’s hand raises to his stomach.  “You didn’t.”

“Well, we aren’t here to look at the sky anyway.  You already have the right idea.” This eases the other man.  Belial gestures him forward and guides him to the shade of a nearby tree.  “Here we go. Look.” Belial crouches down; Sariel does the same, gangly arms coming to rest on his knees as he peers down at where Belial is now pointing.

“Oh…!”  His eyes widen.  Hidden in the grass, more visible in places where the roots have thinned the grass out, are several small holes in the soil.  “These weren’t made by ants.”

“Good eye.  Ants are your thing.  These are mine.” There’s no telling how long it will take for the show to start, but Sariel has never had a problem with patience.  They have ample time. Endless time, really, endless nights to come back if Belial’s a bit premature, and judging by the look on Sarry’s face, he’d come out to wait with him every single night if Belial asked.

His relationship with Sariel is a bit different than most.  Sariel himself is a bit different, but that makes him fun--in a different way.  When Belial gets Lucilius to do something he wants, it’s deliciously validating.  When he manipulates Lucifer it’s a victory. Michael is a treat, but an easy target.  Sariel is none of those things, and Belial has never felt the compulsion to try and make him one.  He’s a puzzle of sorts, maybe, because he requires a lot of figuring out, but even that doesn’t feel totally accurate.  It’s not about manipulation, trickery, or temptation--that’s the fundamental difference. The thing Belial wants from Sariel is for Sariel to do what Sariel wants of Sariel’s own volition.  It’s ironic, really. They’ve talked together about being tools and neither of them has a problem with it, not conceptually, anyhow.

That’s not entirely true, though, as few things are with Belial.  Sure, he’s satisfied with being Lucilius's utility knife himself, but from the moment he was finally able to hold a real conversation with the guy, he’s been undermining Sariel’s purpose.  Sariel doesn’t like medical examinations--who does? But that was the first preference he ever admitted to, so Belial pulled some strings to get him scheduled for half as many.  Sariel doesn’t like killing--hilariously incongruent with his designated use _as_ a tool, which is exactly the angle Belial spent two weeks pushing until he’d convinced Lucilius that he was worth more as a study subject than a weapon.  Now Belial is in charge of doling out Sariel’s deigned tasks, almost none of which require him to take lives. Sariel is, effectively, no longer a tool at all.  If anything, he’s an art project. He’s a person with a sense of identity that Belial is slowly helping him unearth. But a sense of self can’t be built on negative feedback alone.  What does Sariel like? Sariel likes bugs. Convenient, because Belial does too.

“Deputy, look.”  There’s something stirring in one of the holes.  Their patience is finally rewarded when a brown insect about the size of a rupie crawls out into the grass.  Underground it likely dug through the dirt with the same ease with which angels fly, but above ground it’s clumsy.  Its skinny legs push down blades of grass one at a time, but it nonetheless ambles quite determinedly in the direction of the tree, uninhibited by its lack of grace.

“Cicadas,” Belial explains.  “They only come out for the summer.”

“It’s still spring.”

“Some of them like to get an early start.  The show’s only just beginning, though.” More of the little creatures begin to appear, beginning at a trickle but soon evolving into a veritable stream of gawky insects scrambling for any nearby vertical surface.  They mainly circumnavigate the two men observing them, but one crawls up onto Sariel’s boot and begins to ascend him instead. Belial plucks it off. “Aha, it must think you’re a tree.”

Sariel looks as though he might say otherwise, but instead he shrugs.  “I am tall and brown.”

“Hah!”  Cheeky. “You remind me more of the cicada, though.”

“A cicada?”  Belial holds the captured insect up so that Sariel can watch it wriggling between his fingers.  

“You see its little front legs?  They’re like scythes. I had to be careful getting it off your shoe so I didn’t tear one off.”  Sariel leans in closer to inspect what he describes and Belial can’t help but grin. “You have a lot of faith in me.  The last time Lucilius got this close to me with a cicada in my hand I put it right on his nose. That was ages ago, and he still hasn’t forgiven me.”

“You can put it on me.  I don’t care.” This may sound like indifference, but Belial can tell that it’s stemming from genuine intrigue.

“Here, hold out your hand.  I’ll spare you.” He places the bug into the other angel’s palm when it’s offered.  They both watch it closely as it crawls across his fingers. Sariel twists his hand to give it more ground to cover and guides it onto his other hand when it reaches the edge.  Once it’s made a few laps, he moves to return it to the ground, but it slips off in its mad dash.

“Oh--”

“Don’t worry,” Belial reassures him.  “They’re sturdy little guys.”

The cicada is squirming in the grass, but seemingly unharmed.  Sariel carefully helps it right itself and it soldiers on toward the tree once more.  “It does look like my scythe,” he says as it begins to climb. “It’s not like an ordinary scythe.  It has two segments. It’s bent at the end. It has spikes. I think it warrants the comparison.” An excellent thing to hear.  

As the night creeps by, so do the cicadas, until they’ve almost entirely replaced the bark of the tree.  Belial motions for the two of them to stand. “We’re not done here, but it’ll be easier to watch now that they’re higher up.”

“Right.”  Sariel takes a step back.  There’s a soft crunch. His face contorts in dismay as he spies the crumpled corpse of a cicada under his heel.  

“Not that sturdy, I guess,” Belial says mildly.

“I’m… sorry,” he stammers, but Belial pats him on the back and shakes his head.

“Don’t worry about it.  There are going to be thousands of them, and not just tonight.”  Sariel bites his lip, unconvinced. Belial softens his tone. “Think of it this way--your little ant friends are probably going to get a good meal out of him now.  They have to eat something besides bread.”

“... I know,” he says, still looking blue.

“The cicadas are going to run out of real estate on the tree here in a moment,” he explains further.  “Some of them are going to have to stay here on the ground. Once they’ve found a spot, no matter where it is, they’re going to be stuck in a vulnerable position for the next few hours.  The ones in the grass are going to be prime prey for the ants as well, only these ones will be eaten alive. You’ve really spared that one an awful fate.”

Sariel seems to accept this, if not exactly happily.  He moves onto something else. “Why will they be so vulnerable?”

Carefully, so as not to kill more of them and upset Sarry further, Belial eases toward the tree to point at the cicadas that have stilled.  “Look closely at the thorax. You see the seam? The shell isn’t the real body anymore, it’s just wearing it.”

“Like a butterfly’s cocoon, but with legs,” the other angel concludes.

“The transformation isn’t quite so dramatic, but it’s still a sight to see.”  A satisfied cicada that had taken its spot a while ago is flexing against the confines of its shell, stretching it to the breaking point until  its fleshy white body bursts forth from its back. It crawls out of its old self, its damp wings unfurling behind it. “Like an angel being born,” muses Belial.  It reminds him of that every time.

“No,” Sariel says bluntly.  Belial again turns to him for his unique perspective; Sariel reaches past him to point at the emerging cicada.  “It looks like the Head Researcher.”

Belial blinks.  “Lucilius?”

“Yeah.  It’s all white, but it has this red,” he says, circling the insect’s eyes.  He draws his finger down to trace the fall of its fragile wings. “They don’t look like wings.  They hang down its body, like a robe.”

He peers closely at the insect as Sariel details his explanation, then breaks out into a laugh.  “Hah! Okay, I see it now!” Sariel cracks a rare smile in return, and Belial’s grows twice as large.  “I don’t think I would’ve noticed if you hadn’t pointed it out. So you and Cilius are both cicadas. Maybe that’s why you’re my two favorite people.”

Sariel turns to stare at him.  His mouth hangs just slightly open as he visibly unpacks the implications of what was just said to him.  “I’m one of your favorites?”

“Of course.  If I didn’t enjoy your company, I wouldn’t come bug you as often as I do.  Though I like you and Cilius in very different ways, mind you,” Belial clarifies.  “I share some very special, intimate moments of a certain variety with Cilius…”

“The birds and the bees.”  

“You get it.”  Having that conversation with Sariel had been a riot.  “But what we’re doing here is something I don’t think I could share with anyone but you, Sarry.   No one else would wait out here all night doing nothing but watching the cicadas. They just wouldn’t appreciate it.”  Sariel’s eyes are wide and particularly bright, but he doesn’t move to respond. He’s likely trying to figure out how he even should--Sariel’s not exactly the best conversationalist, which he’s admitted to feeling a little insecure about before, so Belial takes the pressure off by turning back to the bugs and the tree.  “Well, they may look like Cilius now, but they’re not done changing yet. By morning they’ll have really grown into themselves and will be prepared to live out their new lives.”

“By morning?” Sariel says at last.

“Yup.  It’ll be another couple of hours, but--”

“That’s not long,” he interrupts.  “Let’s watch until then.” Sariel still looks a little thrown, but his eyes are sparkling.  Belial can’t help but feel a bit like an eager child himself.

“For us primals, it’s basically nothing.  What’s a few hours compared to a few thousand years?”

Just over the course of that short conversation, the tree has become dotted all over with little white bodies delicate as pudding.  Patches of grass begin to light up similarly as the hours pass. By daybreak the two of them can see them clinging to every other tree and the sides of every building, a seemingly-infinite number of cicadas--all black now, having darkened overnight like they’d absorbed the evening and broken the dawn themselves.  “Deputy?”

It’s the first time either of them has spoken in a few hours.  “Hm?”

“They aren’t me or the Head Researcher anymore.  Now they’re you.”

Belial laughs, crossing his arms so that he can hold his hand to his elbow and the other hand to thoughtfully stroke his chin.  “I guess that rounds it out. You’ve officially deconstructed what draws me to cicadas. Well done, Sarry.”

“I didn’t deconstruct anything.”  He pauses shortly after saying this.  “Or, maybe I did…?”

“I think so.  I’m seeing them in a whole new light.”  The light around them is still quite bleak.  The sun may be coming up, but it hasn’t reached a point in the sky where it can change the color beyond casting a muted grey over everything.  The remaining twilight feels like a last opportunity for a little more honestly, seeing as Belial’s been trying that on for size all night. “Sometimes I wish I really were a cicada, you know.”

“In the same way I wished I was a soldier ant?”  He seems a bit wary as he asks.

“More or less, yeah.  They’re wonderfully ephemeral.  They’ll only live for about a month from here on out.”

“Only a month…”  He can see Sariel watching him out of the corner of his eye, but he keeps his own eyes on the insects, somewhat wistfully.

“I think that makes them more exciting.  They’ll spend their days in nothing but pleasure, drinking and mating, and then they’ll just die.  Me, though? Well, I’d still like to get as much of those things in as I can get away with, but my life spirals on endlessly.”  He idly twirls his hand. “I’d like to think it’ll never get boring, buuuuut…” He then lets his wrist hang, shrugs, and sighs. “Lucilius is under the impression that this whole world is hurtling towards nothing but that.  Not even an oblivion, just a stagnant equilibrium that we’ll all have to slog through forever. I’m just one primal. My two hands can only do so much to keep things interesting. I’d just rather quit while I’m ahead, you know?”  He hardly finishes the sentence before Sariel grabs his arm. “Whoa, hold on, Sarry!”

“Don’t say that.”  Sariel’s voice has just an edge of a quiver to it.  His jaw is tense and his face is stricken with a grimace.  Belial freezes in his vice grip, genuinely caught off-guard.  “You shouldn’t look forward to dying. Death isn’t good, it’s horrible.”

He supposes he had this one coming.  He affects another smile and waves him off.  “Simmer down, Sarry. I’m only kidding.”

“You’re lying.  You were telling the truth a minute ago.”

“You think so?”  It’s kind of impressive that Sariel can tell the difference.  Even Lucilius struggles with that from time to time.

“Deputy…”  Sariel grits his teeth.  He flexes the fingers on his free hand, then moves it to his chest and fiddles with the string of beads framing his clavicle.  His eyes remain on Belial. “I’m… I was made to be the Archangel of Execution. I know about death.  There’s nothing interesting about it. If you die, you die. So long as you’re dead, things really will be nothing but the same for you.  Infinite, unchanging, unimpressive... Just painful.” He might have a point, Belial supposes, although he’s ever so slightly missing the point Belial was trying to make.  In death he won’t exactly be haunted by the banality of it. Sariel swallows, then grows an intense focus. “Deputy. When I said I wanted to be a soldier ant, you told me that you and the Head Researcher could make me that way.  I wouldn’t have to think about friends or foes, enemies or allies. I would be able to function as intended. Meaningless slaughter. But, then, you didn’t do that.”

“Meaningless slaughter was never your intended use, Sariel.”

“I don’t like hurting others.  Things, or people… But I don’t care if I’m a tool or a person.  You don’t care if you’re a tool or a person. But you don’t want me to be a tool…  Just a person. Right?”

It’s a strange thing to be confronted about.  Belial is, well, not exactly an honest person, but that’s currently on the down low.  He’s the Archangel of Cunning for a reason. He won’t say his popularity is unwarranted, but it is perhaps misunderstood.  Plenty of people have lauded him for his insincere sincerity and back-handed support, and barely a handful are aware of the irony.  Those that are, of course, tend to take it as evidence that he’s not a particularly good person, either. A fair assessment. This is the first time anyone has accused him of doing something for their sake instead of his, and been right.  Sariel’s fingers dig into his arm, then slide off to grip his sleeve instead.

“Nobody else thinks that I could be a person.”  The formerly enthusiastic glitter in Sariel’s eyes has taken on a physical form.  They’re welling with tears.

“Sarry…  Come on, now, Sarry, don’t cry.”  Belial sighs and pulls his long red sash over his shoulder and holds the ends to the other angel’s face as the tears ooze down his cheeks.  Sariel buries his nose into them, but he fights to keep up the conversation even though he has to choke out the words through his teeth.

“I don’t know how to be subtle about it like you, but I want that for you, too!  I won’t be a soldier ant if you won’t be an ephemeral cicada. You’re my… You’re my friend.”  The pit of Belial’s stomach twists in a way he isn't used to. “I don’t want you to die. I don’t care what happens to me, what purpose I have to serve or what it does to me.  But I don’t want you to die.” He scrubs his face on the sash. “I-If everything becomes the same, then we can just watch ants and cicadas every day. It can be a few hours, or a few nights, or a few thousand years.  All the way into oblivion.  I don’t care.  Just don’t--”

“Okay, okay,” Belial finally says.  He closes his hand over Sariel’s, still clinging to his sleeve with the determination of the cicadas on the trees.  “You’ve convinced me. I’ll stick around.” He gives Sariel a few more minutes to get ahold of himself, sighing softly in the meanwhile.  “I did say ‘sometimes,’ you know. I can’t bow out when I’ve got such important things to occupy myself with. Somebody has to make sure Cilius makes it to bed on time...  Or at all.”

Sariel sniffs, rubbing at his eyes.  “You wouldn’t want the Head Researcher to die.”

“You’ve got me there.  If Cilius died, nothing could stop me from getting him back.  I’d travel from stars to the Crimson Horizon, if that’s what it took, but I’d rather not have to.  I do see where you’re coming from.” He shrugs to try and brush the topic off. “Beyond that, so long as there are interesting things to see, I’ll fight for my life.  Honest.” Still an unfamiliar feeling. “I’m terrible at dying.”

Sariel takes a few shaky breaths, but his breathing finally stabilizes.  He stands up straight once more, at least as much as he ever does, and while his face is blotchy from crying, he’s more or less composed himself.  The sunlight has begun to seep into the park and other people are finally stirring, as are the nearly-forgotten insects they’ve been keeping company.  Their signature humming starts from the moment the light touches the first dry, glassy wing. If Sariel had anything else to say on the subject of life and death, he’s lost it now.  He looks over his shoulder, at Belial, and at the tree, surprised and curious once again. “I know this sound.”

“You recognize it, hm?” Belial asks, eager to steer back to the reason they came out in the first place.  “Now you know what’s making all the ruckus. It’s mostly white noise right now, but by the afternoon it’ll be impossible to ignore, given how many of them there are.”

“I see…”

Belial carefully extracts himself from Sariel’s hands.  “And more are going to keep coming. This is a swarming year.  It’s going to be loud. You won’t be able to hear yourself talk.”

“It’s a good sound,” Sariel gives his assessment.  “I like it. I don’t need to talk.”

“Good excuse not to.”  Belial pats him chipperly on the shoulder.  “Why don’t you take the day off and spend some time appreciating the music, then?”

“Huh?”

“It’s okay to play hooky now and then.  I’ll take care of the little details so you won’t get into trouble for it.”

“So you aren’t staying…”

Belial shakes his head apologetically.  “Sorry, Sarry. Too much on my plate to take care of today.  Speaking of, if you’re going to be hanging out here, make sure you remember to eat, all right?  Like your little friends.” He taps the ground with the side of his shoe, where a little line of early risers have already come out to carry home the cicada Sarry squashed.  His attention is commanded by that pretty effectively, so Belial steps back to give him some space to enjoy. “See? Just like I told you. I know I’m in no position to be lecturing you on the subject, but death really isn’t all bad all the time.”

Sariel has crouched back down to watch the marching ants, but he responds without looking up.  “If you died, there would be no ants big enough to carry you away. You wouldn’t let me be one.”

Cheeky!  Belial laughs before he can help himself.  “Touché.”

“You said there were more coming?  Will you watch the next wave tonight too?”

“You really want to pull another all-nighter so fast?”  Not that he’s opposed to forgoing sleep for a little fun, but Sariel isn’t usually on the list of people he’d be keeping up.  He sighs, tutting like an older brother being needled by a sibling into doing something he already wanted to do. “Well, I guess that’s fine.  This only happens once a year, and a swarm this big only every twenty or so. I’m the one who asked you in the first place.” Sariel is still looking down, but he does smile.  Since he’s in good range for it, Belial lightly tousles the top of his head. “I’ll catch you later, then.” With a two-finger salute, he takes off.  It’ll be good to have a repeat of the event.  He hadn’t gotten an opportunity to bring up the rustic accessory potential of the empty cicada shell, given that the conversation had taken a bit of a left turn somewhere. Tonight he can get right to it, though, especially if Sariel notices the one Belial stuck in his hair before he left.

The cicadas have been coming out in routine cycles for as long as Belial has been alive, but he hasn’t gotten bored of them yet.  Something with such regular frequency probably won’t change at equilibrium, either. Maybe it’ll lose its charm in a few millennia or so.  Maybe not? Only time will tell. Belial finds himself shrugging at nobody in particular as he heads inside, his hands in his pockets.

He won't worry about it too much.  Either way, he knows Sariel will always keep things interesting.


End file.
